Author Archive

The Graveyard Book is a straight-up children’s novel. I searched around Neil Gaiman’s shelf in the fantasy section of my local bookstore for quite a bit before thinking to check “Young Readers.” However, adults who enjoy Gaiman’s other work (especially Coraline) should not let this dissuade them from picking

Perfume, by Patrick Suskind, follows the life of a man born in Paris, 1738 with no personal odor; a disquieting feature that people only notice subconsciously. This man, John-Baptiste Grenouille is best described by Suskind as “one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew

When one thinks of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, philosophical ruminations and existential crises are not often the first things that comes to mind. However, this did not stop John Gardner, author of the novel Grendel, from completely flipping the classic on its head. This small yet intense novel tells

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is the sort of book that people tend to either hate or love. The text is infuriatingly complicated, even though its message and storyline are quite simple. Major reviews of the book swing from commentary on Danielewski’s genius to criticism regarding the

Charles de Lint has written sixty-seven books to date, he is nothing if not prolific. Ranging from collections of short-stories to full novels, almost all of them have helped to pioneer a growing area of fiction known as ‘urban fantasy.’ Like any genre, it’s a bit difficult to

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth,